This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
“I hope we can put the past behind us and work together from here on out without any problems,” said my ex-boyfriend Austin (not his real name), peeking into my office.
I was reeling from the shock of speaking to him for the first time after giving him the silent treatment for six months. But it didn’t happen out of nowhere; I knew why he was here.
Earlier in the day, I received a memo from the owner of the publishing company we both worked for announcing that Austin had been promoted to editor-in-chief of the magazine for which I had proofread and written.
This meant that my ex-boyfriend was now my boss.
Friendship turned into flirting
Austin and I became friends a few months after we started working at the company. Even though we didn’t work together directly, I interacted with him at times. During every meeting, he made me feel so comfortable.
He had large, kind eyes and a continuous furrow between his eyebrows, as if he were constantly stunned by the intensity of the world. But he wasn’t shy; he was the kind of person who never met a stranger. He had a nonjudgmental air about him, and even during our initial banter about office matters, I felt like we had been friends for a long time. He turned out to be incredibly intelligent and I started to feel attracted to him.
This was the 1990s, before many workplaces adopted strict “no interoffice socializing” policies. But even then I knew that dating a coworker was a bad idea. “Don’t take your treasure where you take your money,” the saying goes. What would the rest of the office think? Was I the kind of woman who slept with office guys?
Logic told me to suppress my feelings, but Eros is strong. I foolishly ignored my instincts and let myself fall in love with Austin.
One day I was invited to lunch with a group of people from the office and when I arrived at the cafe in question I saw that Austin was there. I sat next to him and we chatted some more. Before long it became a given that we would eat together, flirting all the time.
In many ways, he was the perfect match for me; we worked in the same industry and had similar aspirations. We were both driven to create and had similar tastes in film and books. We always had something we liked to talk about together.
One night, the sexual tension that had been building between us expanded. We were both in the office late and he came to my office to say hello. Taking a break from our respective projects, we sat together on the couch in my office. The energy between us was palpable. I fell into his arms and he kissed me.
Keeping the office romance a secret
After that we became an object.
Although our company did not prohibit colleagues from dating, we both already sensed the taboo nature of our relationship, so we tried to keep it a secret. We pretended we hadn’t spent the nights together and made sure to arrive at work separately in the morning.
But then we’d spend lunch in his office and I’d come out with disheveled clothes and disheveled hair. Of course, we did more than just eat in her office, and the forbidden aspects of our relationship made it even more intoxicating.
I don’t doubt we were the source of a lot of office gossip, but at that point I didn’t care. I had fallen in love with Austin.
In retrospect, the smartest thing any of us could have done was get jobs at different companies. But neither of us did, and that made things incredibly awkward when we eventually broke up.
The relationship has soured
It’s hard to remember exactly how it happened, but as happens with many couples, we grew apart.
After a year of dating, we started arguing, maybe because we were together so much. We worked together all day, then spent evenings and weekends together. We never had a break from each other.
Hanging out all the time had created our connection, but it had also caused it to fall apart.
One night we argued. I can’t even remember what we were fighting about, but I thought we’d make up afterward, like we always did. Nothing could prepare me for the moment Austin told me he wanted to put an end to it. I begged him to reconsider, but he said it was over.
I was devastated. But more than that, I felt ashamed. It was embarrassing to be dumped and still have to see that person every day.
In the past, when men have broken my heart, I have been able to lick my wounds in private. This time I needed space, but I couldn’t get it.
The next afternoon at work, I slammed the office door when I heard him talking to another employee nearby. I was hurt and out of control. If our colleagues suspected we were dating, they surely knew we weren’t anymore.
It wasn’t just that he rejected me; our friendship was over too. No more lunches together, no more pranks in the office. All I could do was avoid it to make things less painful for me.
From then on I stopped talking to him, looking coldly the other way every time we passed in the corridor, and he, in turn, pretended I didn’t exist.
I couldn’t ignore it anymore
Things went like this for about six months until I got that memo that Austin was now my boss, and that sent me into a tailspin. As my new boss, I would have no choice but to talk to him.
As Austin stood in my doorway after a year of ignoring each other, I wondered how I should respond. Could I put the past behind me now that he had become my superior?
It was easy for him because he was the one who left me. He wasn’t the one with the bruised ego when our colleagues inevitably found out that he had dumped me.
“No,” I said.
Looking back, I can’t believe I responded that way. After all, Austin had the power to fire me. Luckily he didn’t. He walked away and I frantically searched my mind for another way to deal with this difficult situation.
I asked to be moved to another magazine. The company we worked for published several magazines, so it wasn’t an impossible request. When I met with a senior manager, I didn’t tell him why I wanted to move. A few days later I had a new assignment and Austin was no longer my boss.
I can’t believe how unprofessional I was
I can’t say I treated our breakup with much maturity. I was in my twenties and wasn’t the most evolved human being back then. I’m 53 now and I’m amazed at how unprofessional I was.
I know how easy it is to allow yourself to be blinded by your emotions, and I completely understand why it has become commonplace for companies to adopt strict policies against romantic relationships in the workplace.
Yet, a 2023 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 27% of respondents, all US workers, had had a workplace romance. Forty percent said they had flirted with a coworker, and younger workers, Millennials and Gen Z, were 33 percent more likely to say they were open to interoffice dating than older generations.
I find these statistics shocking, knowing what I know now about how difficult it is to deal with a coworker you’ve developed feelings for if it doesn’t work out.
The same survey found that nearly 20% of respondents who had a workplace romance said it negatively affected their career. When you add the possibility of sexual harassment allegations, I would never recommend dating a coworker. Even if you work in different departments, dating a coworker opens a Pandora’s box of emotions that are difficult to navigate professionally.
I left the company about a year after Austin got the promotion, and I haven’t had another workplace romance since. While the experience didn’t have a negative impact on my career, it did affect how people viewed me at that company. I’ve lost the respect of my peers, and it’s a feeling I never want to feel again. I learned the lesson.
Lara Sterling is a writer who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.